A Soccer Gem in Jersey

Carl Robinson of the New York Red Bulls takes a corner kick in the first half of the team’s 3-1 win over Santos. Robinson’s corner led to the Red Bulls’ second goal. Photograph by Justin Bishop.

A group of passengers snickered and clapped as our PATH train crossed over the Hackensack River, a few minutes west of Manhattan, on its way to Harrison, New Jersey. I looked out the window and saw the reason for their schadenfreude—gridlock traffic, with people getting out of their cars in frustration and casting looks of envy at us as our train glided by.

A few minutes later Red Bull Arena came into view. “That can’t be the stadium,” I muttered to myself. It seemed too small for soccer. And the commute had been too easy and quick—I’d boarded the train at the World Trade Center stop only 20 minutes earlier. I was accustomed to getting stuck on the Number 7 local to Flushing for Mets games, or crawling along on the 4 or the B to the Bronx.

But soon I was in my seat at midfield and a most remarkable thing began to unfold—an American soccer game staged in an intimate, top-notch, soccer-appropriate setting. It felt downright European. It felt, for a moment, more fitting to call it football.The scene was blasted full of American flavor soon enough. With the Red Bulls and their Brazlian visitors (Santos, the club that gave Pelé his start) waiting in their positions and trying to stay loose, the NASCAR Red Bull stock racer emerged from a gate at the southern end of the pitch. It made its way to the midfield line, the driver revving its engine all the way—I half expected him to spin his wheels and dig up some turf—and dropped off Lindsey Vonn, the American skier who won gold in the downhill at the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Vonn trotted out to drop off the game ball, and then she and the racecar headed for the exit. The game was on.

Plans to build Red Bull Arena were announced nearly six years ago. Construction began in September of 2006. The facility holds 25,000 fans and cost $200 million to build. Seats along the sidelines are only 21 feet from the field of play, and the roof covers the spectators, but not the pitch. Many people are calling it the best soccer facility in the United States, but Don Garber, the commissioner of Major League Soccer, has called it “the best small stadium in the world.” By inviting Santos to the arena for a friendly to open the arena, team officials were hoping to signal a new level of commitment to the game, the team, and the fans.

Early in the game the noise level from the Red Bulls fans was impressive. They seemed to have mastered in short order a coordinated low growl that swelled in volume and rose in pitch as it moved from one side of the stadium to the other. Then I realized that the sound was the roar of jet engines as planes took off from Newark Airport, only two miles away. Just like that, the place felt like home. It was the Red Bulls’ very own Shea-like signature—grating at first, but then endearing in a gritty and New York kind of way.

The Red Bulls, surprising many, dominated the game. It was 3-0 at halftime. Santos made it 3-1 in the match’s final seconds. During the second half I went over to Section 101—the seats behind the goal at the arena’s southern end. That’s where the most die-hard of all Red Bulls supporters sit. They’d been screaming and waving their flags and scarves all day.

Down in the thicket of fans, I found Ethan Case, a 21 year-old from New Jersey who was wearing a shirt emblazoned with “MetroStars,” the Red Bulls’ old name. Case was a senior at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and he’d come home from school just for the game.

“We’ve been waiting 14 years for this,” Case shouted into my ear. “Today when we came in on the PATH train, we saw all these warehouses out here. It’s a wasteland. But then there’s this gem in the middle of all this crap. It’s amazing.”

Case joined his fellow supporters in a fight song as the game’s action moved toward our end of the field. Then he turned back to me. “We thought the Red Bulls didn’t care about us,” he said. But he smiled and gestured to scene around him. “Now we’re thrilled.”

I asked if he thought this was a good omen for American soccer.

“We’re going to surprise a lot of people at the World Cup,” Case said. “American soccer is getting better—it’s not a question of if we’ll win the World Cup, but when.”

Any prediction for the USA-England match, on June 12?

“England won’t win,” he said. “But they might tie.”

At the back of Section 101 I found a couple of brave souls—a young man and his mother wearing Brazil jerseys right there in the heart of Red Bull territory. Christopher Gutierrez was a 24 year-old Brazilian student living in New York. He wasn’t surprised to see Santos lose.

“The best players stayed home,” he said. “It’s too bad. The reason I came was to see Robinho.” (A Brazilian forward, Robinho plays for Santos—on loan from Manchester City—and for the national team. He didn’t travel to New York because of a reported injury.)

But Gutierrez didn’t think the Santos loss was a sign that Brazilian soccer was heading for a stumble any time soon. “In 2014 the World Cup comes to Brazil,” Gutierrez said. “They will work hard to win it all this year in South Africa so there will be less pressure when we have it at home.”

And what did he think of this new American soccer stadium?

“Wow,” he said with a smile. “I’m impressed!”

Red Bull Arena during the singing of Brazil’s national anthem.

The Santos team prior to kickoff.

Joel Lindpere after scoring early in the game to put the Red Bulls up, 1-0.